The song’s crescendo comes two minutes in when Toots breaks into a scat solo that cannot be translated into any language known to man, delivered with palpable passion that made his message universal. On the poignant “ 54-46 (Was My Number),” Toots recalls the dehumanization of his arrest and 18-month imprisonment at Jamaica’s Richmond Farm Correctional Center for what he always insisted was a trumped-up ganja charge just as his music career was taking off. It’s about the quality that Jamaicans need to go back in the festival jamboree… You gotta talk to the children.” “I get three shillings and five shillings for a number one record, which I had 31 number one record in Jamaica… It’s not about money for me. “Those days we get 14 cents for the record to play on the radio,” Toots said.
When Toots began singing in his parents’ church, music was not seen as a career prospect, and the profits were slim for Jamaican recording artists in the 1960s. 💥💣🔫#BoomshotsĪ post shared by Word Sound & Power on at 8:19am PDT
“This man don’t trouble no one… but if you trouble this man it will bring a Bam Bam” Original Maytals Classic 🎶 All them a talk, them nuh bad like Niya Fiya Ball ☄️🔥💥 via. “I haven’t been collecting no money from that song all now.” “People keep on singing it over and over and over, and they don’t even pay me a compliment,” he told Boomshots. It would also be sampled in numerous hip hop classics, and interpolated into Lauryn Hill’s “Lost Ones.” But according to Toots, he did not benefit financially from these endless cover versions. “Bam Bam” went on to inspire numerous cover versions, starting with Sister Nancy, Yellowman, and Pliers. “We start fly out like a bird,” he says with a laugh. “You in the music business and you want to be on top and you write a good song and you go on this competition and if they like it then it becomes #1.” After The Maytals won, the group was in demand not just all over the island, but all over the world. “I didn’t know what it means but it was a big deal,” he told Boomshots. In 2016, on the 50th anniversary of “Bam Bam” winning first place, Toots looked back over the legacy of the tune that made him a star. “Everybody just want to hear a good song that their children can sing,” he recalled. “I must tell you that I won three festivals in Jamaica already, which is “Bam Bam,” “Sweet & Dandy” and “ Pomp & Pride.” Toots described that first festival competition as a joyous occasion. “Festival in Jamaica is very important to all Jamaicans,” the veteran singer stated in a video interview this past summer while promoting his latest entry into the annual competition.
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